


In the Crooked Streets of St. Petersburg, We Are All the Same

by youwilllovemylaugh



Category: Anastasia (1997), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anastasia - Freeform, Bucky Barnes Remembers, M/M, Memory Loss, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Stucky - Freeform, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, bucky is actually the crown prince of russia and has no idea, memory regained, sort of, the golden quartet, the stucky/anastasia AU you've all been waiting for, until he does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:18:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3532481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwilllovemylaugh/pseuds/youwilllovemylaugh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is 1916 in St. Petersburg, Russia, when the Romanov Empire falls at the hands of one devious and evil Father Alexander, immortal former religious advisor to the crown. In the maelstrom that ensues, the young crown prince is separated from his grandmother, and his life is changed forever.</p><p>~</p><p>Inspired by <a href="http://dongofachilles.tumblr.com/post/89511256502/anastasia-au-where-bucky-is-the-lost-amnesiac-heir">this post</a> by tumblr user <a href="http://dongofachilles.tumblr.com/>dongofachilles</a>">dongofachilles</a>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Take note! If you've been reading along, I changed up the chapters a little bit and broke things up so it's more readable. If you've been reading from the beginning, and want to continue, please start with chapter 6 (which will be up tonight)!
> 
> If you're new and starting from the beginning, chapter 1 is your place!

_Natasha, 1916_

On the three-hundredth anniversary of her family’s reign over Russia, Natasha Romanov attended a ball thrown in her honor by her son, Nicholas, at their palace in St. Petersburg. She had attended many balls in her family’s ballroom, but that night it was decorated more extravagantly than she had ever seen it before: in reds and golds and violets, brocades and velvets, jewels shining everywhere.

Beside her, seated in the place of honor, was her eight-year-old grandson, James. He was dressed like his father but in miniature, his suit navy wool with gold rope on the shoulders and brassy buttons that shone in the candlelight, his shoes white and polished so that they gleamed. He had been quiet all evening, watching the adults swirl around in front of them to a waltz the orchestra was playing opposite them. He did not fidget or whine, but rather held his demeanor with a practiced poise that would have done his mother proud.

Natasha looked down at him. She was the face of a brilliant past, and he was proving his future as the leader of his family’s reign. When he smiled back up at her, she signaled for a waiter.

“I am going to leave in the morning, as you know,” she said to James.

“I’ll miss you, Grandmama.” His words were not practiced, but genuine.

Natasha smiled. “I’ll miss you, too, and that is why I have something for you,” she said, as the waiter arrived with a small box in tow. He was a young boy, maybe a year or two older than James, but he didn’t look it. He was the only other child in the palace. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and his eyes bulged out of his head a little, like maybe he was sick. His blond hair fell like straw over his face when he bowed his head.

“Tonight is an historical evening,” she said. “I will be remembered for it. And so will you.” Out of the box she lifted an ornate music box, painted green and gold. Using a matching necklace, she opened it, and the waltz that was written for his family, the same one the band was playing, hummed from inside the box.

He took it from Natasha. “Thank you.”

“And this,” she said. She showed him the necklace. “This is so you will always remember where your future will lead.”

She placed the chain over his head and watched as he admired the gold pendant sitting on his chest. _Together in Paris_ , it read in neat gold script, and when he smiled up at her in thanks, she found tears in her eyes.

A cry rang out from the back of the ballroom, and then there was a loud bang.

From the back of the ballroom, a man dressed in emerald robes emerged from the cloud of smoke that filled the air.

“The Romanovs have let their people starve for long enough,” he shouted. “They will pay for their sins with their lives.”

Natasha recognized the man’s voice – Father Alexander, leader of the church and priest to the Romanov family for decades. Confusion filled her chest. A second loud bang erupted from the hall outside the ballroom, and was followed by angry shouts and the smell of fire.

“Run,” she said, to no one in particular. She was old, but she looked at her grandson, saw the fear in his eyes, and grabbed at his hands as she told him to run with her.

“What’s happening?” James asked, but the smoke had gotten so thick she could not reply. A second hand grabbed her, and she stopped for a moment in alarm, ready to shake it off, when the smoke cleared a little, and a familiar face came into view.

It was the waiter with the small box. “Follow me,” he said, “I know a way out of here.”

A third loud bang sounded from behind them, and Natasha had no choice but to believe him. With her grandson trailing along, she followed the young waiter around their table of honor, and to the wall farthest from the front door. With the slightest touch of his hand, the boy pushed open the wall and led them through a dark, twisting passageway that he seemed to know by heart.

Just as Natasha began to suspect him, they emerged in the courtyard, where the smell of fire and the sound of chanting filled the air.

“Go,” the boy said, after they had scrambled outside. “Go, now!”

Natasha moved to run again, but James stopped her.

“The music box,” he said, and looked back at the palace, which had burst into flames.

“There’s no time,” the boy said. “You have to run.”

Natasha began to run, and James struggled to catch up.

“Come on, my dear boy, you must run,” she shouted behind her. Fear kept her moving forward, running as fast as she could in her tall shoes, until she was leaping onto a train that was leaving the station, and looked back for her grandson.

He was not far behind, not quite out of reach, but the train was gaining speed.

“Run,” she said to him. “Run, James.”

“Grandmama,” he cried, reaching out a hand toward her. She grabbed on, but the train lurched forward and sped up again, and his fingers slipped from hers.

“No,” she said. A man was pushing her inside, telling her to stay on the train. “ _No,_ ” she shouted. “James!”

“Grandmama!” he yelled, but the train kept moving and he fell, or was hit, or was pushed, and he hit the ground headfirst, and she was helpless to stop it.


	2. Chapter 2

_Steve, 1926_

For as long as he could remember, Steve had lived in the old Romanov palace. It was never much, even before the remaining surviving Romanovs fled to Paris and abandoned it. He was the only one to return there after it burned – he was the only one without another home to go to – and since he had made it his own.

He had learned things during his years alone. Like how to make food last as long as possible, and how to avoid the police, and how to swindle people into believing his lies, just as long as he needed them to. He was a con artist, and a real artist for sure – he could cover his tracks better than anyone else in the conning business. He was smart, wise to the game, and his small size made him quick enough to elude even the swiftest detectives.

Which was why Sam, his only friend in the world, had come to him with the greatest con of all.

“There’s news out of Paris that the Romanov matriarch is looking for her beloved grandson,” he said, with a big grin on his narrow face. He had come from the square, where he always listened to the townspeople chattering away. An apple core was in his back pocket, and Steve was sure he’d stolen it from a vendor while he was listening. “All we have to do is find him, and we get ten million rubles.”

It was tempting, Steve agreed. “But the Romanovs are dead. How are we going to find the right guy?”

Sam clapped his hand on Steve’s shoulder and wiggled his eyebrows. “You are not on your game, this morning, are you? We sniff around, keep our eyes peeled. And we hold auditions.”

Steve thought about it, nodded his blond head a few times. “We could try that.”

“Try?” Sam’s voice was incredulous. “It’s ten  _million_  rubles! We’ll have to do better than try.”

Work had been slow the past few weeks, Steve knew. Hell, money had been slow and difficult to come by ever since the Romanovs were overthrown, and the Communists took over. He and Sam needed that money, perhaps not desperately, but ten million rubles was certainly enough to make anyone’s situation seem dire. His fingers itched and his pockets burned as he thought – they were becoming too well known as con men in St. Petersburg, anyway. Under this new regime, they wouldn’t last long.

Steve looked up at Sam and smiled. “Then we’d better get started, because we have a lot of work to do.”

 

_Bucky_

“My cousin called me this morning and he says you are all set for a job on his fishing boat,” said Petrovna. “You are welcome. You must get out of here now, anyway, because I have to make breakfast for the little ones and you will be late.”

She was shooing him out of the orphanage with a rolled-up newspaper, batting his arms and swatting at his backside like she used to when he first arrived on her doorstep, confused and alone and terrified.

“I know, I know, Comrade Petrovna,” Bucky said, skipping over his feet as he tried to avoid her newspaper. “I’m not going to be late, I’m leaving right now.”

“You are not moving fast enough, Bucky.” She pushed him out the front door and threw his sack of clothes out after him; he caught it. “My cousin, he doesn’t wait for anybody.”

“All right, all right,” he said. She watched from the doorstep as he made his way to the iron gate of the orphanage, and when he waved goodbye to her, she slammed the door. “Jeez,” he said to himself. Comrade Petrovna had been no mother to him, but no more or less than she was to any of the other kids in the orphanage. Many of the other children there had been orphaned during the riots that came after the fall of the Romanovs, which made them difficult to soothe and manage. Bucky had arrived on Comrade Petrovna’s doorstep without even knowing his own name – Bucky was something she had begun calling him without reason or purpose beyond needing something to call him by. He had been the easiest of her charges to handle. She had never been nasty, but nevertheless, he was glad to be rid of her, glad to be out of the orphanage finally, and moving on with his mysterious and unpredictable life.

The only thing Bucky had arrived with besides the clothes on his back was a necklace. It was an emerald on a long, gold chain, encased in a gold locket that bore the engraving,  _Together in Paris_  on the side that faced his chest. He pulled it out from under his shirt as he made his way toward the docks. He was sure Petrovna had never seen it on him – he would not still have it if she had, he was sure – and its being a secret had kept him from ever asking questions about it. He did not remember much about his childhood at all. Nearly everything from before his time at the orphanage was gone – he had vague recollections of wandering around downtown St. Petersburg on the night he was found, and even fainter remembrances of smoke, smelling fear on the breaths of many people, and a sky that burned orange, a brighter and angrier orange than he had ever seen, before or since.

His life was a mystery, and this was not something that scared him, so much as it intrigued him. He was fascinated to think that he was so unlike everyone else he’d known in the orphanage – his memory loss had not stamped him with the mark of tragedy, or sentenced him to a lifelong emptiness he knew he would never really be able to fill. At least, it had not done this to him for certain, and that room for possibility is what Bucky believed made all the difference.

He rolled the necklace around in his hands as he walked, rubbing his thumb over the inscription like he always did, craving the feeling of the engraved letters under his skin. Years of doing this had worn the sheen off the gold and made the script letters fainter and harder to read, but something told him that, wherever he went, wherever and to whomever the necklace took him, his final destination would bring him answers.

Bucky was halfway to the docks when he knew what he had to do.

The fishmongers were just beginning to set up their tables when he arrived to begin sniffing out the shifty characters. He would need a traveling visa to exit Russia, something he didn’t have, and didn’t have any real money for. And even though he knew Petrovna would never come after him if he didn’t show up on her cousin’s boat, the only way he knew he would be able to leave would be to sneak his way out, on a boat or a train or a bus.

He waited an hour before the stalls became busy, and by then he had seen three tall men in dark coats enter and exit one of the more secluded stalls on the far left end of the market.

Bucky entered the stall and was surprised to find it completely empty, except for a thin woman in the back, who sat at a chair behind a makeshift wooden desk.

“You are Petrovna’s boy?” she asked, in a robust voice.

“Uh, no,” Bucky said. “I need to know where to get a traveling visa.”

“That boy has lost his job,” the woman said. “And Petrovna has lost my respect. Psh.” She rose from her chair and began shuffling her papers around. “We do not have travel visa here.”

“Please,” Bucky said, taking a tentative step forward. “I need to get out of here.”

“We do not have travel visa,” the woman repeated firmly. “Go and find Steven if you want to get travel visa, I am sure he knows where you can find one.”

“Steven,” Bucky said.

"Yes, Steven, in the town square. Or Samuel, the one with the dark face and the smile. He is tall. They are doing big project, but maybe they will help. You will know them. Now get out of my shop, I must help a real customer.”

“Oh. Um, thank you,” Bucky said, before backing out of the stall and heading carefully toward town square.

An hour passed and he had seen no men with dark faces or heard of anyone named Steven. The square was packed with people, but Bucky was standing on the lip of the fountain for a higher vantage, and still, he had seen no one fitting the description given him.

He was about to give up when he heard three men discussing something – an audition – in hushed tones.

“They’re holding them in the old Romanov palace,” said one man, closest to Bucky. He listened more carefully. “Ten million, yes, can you believe it? If only we looked like –”

The men had walked too far along for Bucky to hear them anymore, but he’d heard enough. The Romanov palace had been abandoned for almost ten years, and even though the new regime had torched most of the old relics from the Romanovs’ time, the palace still stood, as a desolate reminder of a past that had brought all of Russia to poverty.

It was the perfect place for crime.

He set off for the palace, inspired by his new information, and when he arrived, he was struck by an extraordinary wave of nostalgia. The palace itself was enormous, larger than even the orphanage. When he entered, he heard voices coming from the left of the entrance hall, and he followed them.

In a small room up a set of stairs, three men waited in front of a curtain that had been haphazardly drawn to separate the space. The men were all shouting at each other, and did not notice when Bucky entered, or when he slipped past them and through the curtain to the other side of the room.

“Next,” came a man’s voice as Bucky slipped through the curtain. “Can you believe these guys?” said the same man, in a hushed tone that told Bucky no one was meant to hear it on the other side of the curtain.

“They’re very loud, yes,” Bucky said. The two men at the table started. One of them was blond, and the other’s face was dark and smiling, just as the fishmonger had said. He was, somehow, in the right place. “Are you Steven?”

The blond man looked at his companion and burst out laughing.

“I don’t think anyone’s called me Steven since the Romanovs were in power,” he said. “Call me Steve.”

“Steve, then,” Bucky said. “I need your help. I’m trying to get an exit visa, and a woman down at the fish market told me I should come see you.”

“See me?” Steve said. He looked at his friend. “I told you, we’re becoming too well-known.” The other man shrugged, and Steve turned back to Bucky. “Look, I don’t have the time to make any fake exit visas right now – I’m short on money and the police have been cracking down on frauds, lately. So unless you’ve got the money to back yourself up, which, judging by your appearance, you don’t, I suggest you get out of here and let me continue my business.” He gave him a quick once-over, which made Bucky cringe a little with self-consciousness. “Unless,” Steve said, tapping the pencil in his hands on his desk. He stared at Bucky a second longer, and then he conferred quietly with the man sitting beside him.

“Unless?” Bucky said. “There can’t be an ‘unless,’ I just want to get to Paris.”

Both Steve and the other man whipped their heads around. “Paris?” said the black man. “What are you going to Paris for?”

Bucky swallowed. “Well, I’m going to see if my family is there. See, I have this, um, clue –”

“Your family lives in Paris?” Steve asked.

“Yes. Well, at least I think so.”

“You think so,” Steve repeated skeptically.

Bucky felt a blush rise on his face. “I … don’t exactly remember who they are, or anything. But I have proof that they’re there, in Paris. Or, someone who knows me is.”

“Well.” Bucky followed Steve’s eyes as they moved from him to his colleague, and back again. “See, it just so happens we’re going to Paris, too. And we’ve got three train tickets and three exit visas right here,” he said, taking a set of thick papers from inside his jacket pocket and flapping them twice in the air.

“Oh, perfect,” Bucky said. “I only need one – I’m traveling by myself.”

“But,” Steve said, and Bucky’s heart fell.

“But what?”   

“But you can only come if you agree to be our Prince James.”

Bucky took a step back, into the curtain. “What?”

“The dowager princess is looking for her grandson,” Steve said. He stood up from his table and moved toward Bucky, who backed further into the curtain. “She lives in Paris. You can come with us there, but only if you pretend to be James.”

“You want me to lie?” he asked. “I’m not going to lie for you – I don’t even know who you are!”

“But do you know who you are?” Steve asked.

Bucky stopped retreating and stared into Steve’s face. His eyes were mistrustful and cunning, and they scared Bucky. Without a second more to think, Bucky turned and escaped through a second doorway, into a narrow winding hallway. Behind him, he could hear Steve shouting after him, and heavy footsteps in pursuit.

Bucky rounded a corner blindly and pushed through a door, which opened into what was once the balcony to a great ballroom.

All around him were old paintings, rusting pots and pans and bowls, ornate and moth-eaten carpets. The walls were papered in heavy red and gold stripes, and though fire had destroyed much of the structure of the building, Bucky could tell he was standing under a ceiling that had once been considered a great architectural feat.  

Hundreds of chairs and tables lay askew and broken on the floor around the edge of the dance floor. An orchestra platform raised up a long table with several drinking glasses and golden goblets and candlesticks, all things Bucky well knew had been outlawed for sale by the communist government. Above the table, hanging on the wall in a large, carved wooden frame, was a painting of the Romanov family.

Bucky went down the balcony steps and over to the table. He had ignored his previous feelings of nostalgia easily – he had lived his whole life with vague remembrances of his past rising to the surface of his memory in such a way that it had become second nature to him. But these were more powerful, more difficult to dismiss. A familiar tune whistled its way into his ears, a soft lilting hum like a lullaby. When he turned around to face the ballroom, he was accosted by the sight of hundreds of people dancing, paired up and swirling around before him in ornate gowns and heavy jewelry. The music wafted through his mind with tantalizing fluidity – he could feel his own limbs swaying to violins he was no longer sure only he could hear.

           

_Steve_

“There you are!” Steve said. He and Sam had split up to cover more of the split passageway through which Bucky had escaped. Steve waited to hear Sam’s footsteps before he appeared over the balcony railing.

Bucky stood before the table of illegal relics Steve and Sam had collected over the years with a look of dazed alarm on his face. If Steve hadn’t known better, he would have thought the man had taken opiates.

“I’m not going to lie for you,” he said, from below. He appeared to be sizing Steve up – Steve had seen the same look on many other men’s faces over the years. It was too late to run without Steve catching up, which Bucky seemed to know. But Bucky looked to Steve as if he had been in enough backyard scraps and rumbles to hold his own if it came down to it, and even if he had Sam nearby to help out, he didn’t want anybody showing up on the dowager princess’s doorstep with a broken nose, or a bruised eye.

“No one is asking you to lie,” Steve said. “We’re asking you to help. And we might be able to help you.”

He had come down the steps tentatively, and was moving toward Bucky, trying to gauge whether he was going to fight or run if he felt threatened by his advance. Steve had trained himself over the years to be unreadable to his enemies, and while Bucky hadn’t proved to be an enemy yet, Steve could tell the kid was far from mastering that skill as he could be. Every emotion he must have ever felt passed his face as Steve approached him, in miniscule waves that Steve strung together to identify as awesome apprehension.

“What do you want?” Bucky asked.

Sam had joined them now. He was breathing heavily but steadily beside Steve, who was looking from Bucky to the painting behind him on the wall. The kid was a near match in the eyes to the Romanov kid, who, in the painting, had been just an infant.

“Listen, Bucky,” Steve said. He was going to have to go all out on this speech, really bring out his appeal. “We really do want to help you. But there’s a lot at stake here. A woman – a powerful woman – is missing her grandson. And we think we can help her. But, we need you if we want to help her out.”

"I already told you, I’m not –”

“Lying, yes, I know.” Bucky was trying not to listen, but Steve could tell this wasn’t going to be a tough argument. He wouldn’t last long after Steve proved to him that he wouldn’t be judged for betraying his own argument. It was the best way, the most effective, to swindle. “But hey,” Steve continued, “you just told us that you don’t know much about your family. And I don’t know, maybe you really don’t know anything, and you were just trying to be smart around us, or something. But you think they’re in Paris, and so is the dowager princess. And, if you don’t mind my saying it, you might be the closest-looking guy to the real Prince James I’ve seen walk in here all day.”

“True enough,” Sam said. “Look at the painting. You’ve got the baby’s blue eyes.”

Bucky turned around cautiously, keeping one eye on Steve and Sam in front of him, and turning the other onto the Romanovs’ family portrait. Steve watched Bucky’s face bleed quiet awe, at the painting, at possibility, at hope. There was something haunting about the painting to begin with, as if it were mocking him, goading him into believing something that may not really be true, and Steve thought about how uneasy the painting must have made Bucky, if it was making him so uncomfortable.

Steve made sure to meet Bucky’s eyes as he turned back around to face them.

“If you come with us, what is there to lose? You’ll get to Paris. You’ll get to leave St. Petersburg. And if it turns out you are the missing Prince James, you’ll be reunited with your royal family. You’ll know who you are and where you came from. And if not, it’s all one big misunderstanding. You’ll have helped us out, and you’ll be free to look for your family. You can’t lose.”

“I can’t lose,” Bucky repeated.

Every hair on Steve’s body stood up, was alive with the prospect of change. The kid didn’t look like he had anything to live for here anymore, something else Steve had seen on countless other people, including himself and Sam, many times before. There was nothing left for Steve himself in St. Petersburg, except for a fairy dust cloud of memories he had spent years trying to forget.

“All right,” Steve heard, and when he cheered, he heard Sam cheer too.


	3. Chapter 3

_It is late at night, and St. Petersburg is quiet. From the old palace, three men sneak out into the night, a mission on their minds. From the Neva, a hundred yards away, a green glowing rises from the depths of the murky water. As the three men escape the city, the green glowing brightens, until it reaches just beneath the surface of the running water, and travels to the shore. Here, a man emerges, his face mottled by age and water erosion. His eyes pop out of his skull and their irises are clear like two crystal balls. He lacks a soul._

_In his hands, he carries a reliquary. It is the source of the green glowing; it is the resting place of his soul. He has risen from his eternal sleep – the one for which he had sold his soul – because still a Romanov heir survives._

_From within the reliquary, the mottled man conjures three demons, all large fighting men. Their eyes burn black with dark purpose. They stand before the mottled man and await his instruction._

_“The Romanov boy has escaped,” exclaims the mottled man. “We must find him and destroy him.”_

_The demons nod, and without further direction, alight into the black sky in search of the missing Romanov boy._

_Steve_

The train was old, and it rattled as it sped south. Steve, Sam, and Bucky were cramped in a small cab near the front of the train, with all of their luggage, and between the rocking back and forth and the oppressive heat of the coal car ahead, Steve had fallen into a sour mood.

Sam, somehow, was sleeping peacefully, slumped against their wall of luggage in the seat next to him. His mouth hung open a little, and every now and then he’d snuffle softly and readjust his cheek on his hand. Their passports and traveling papers stuck out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

Next to Steve was Bucky, who was also awake. He was reading something, a small piece of literature Steve guessed came from one of the stacks of propaganda that had been stacked in every train station in Russia after the Bolsheviks took over. Steve had never been much of one for reading – he had never been still long enough as a child for his brain to get caught up in anything as sedentary as reading – but Bucky was engrossed. His face had glazed over a bit, and he chewed absently at one of his fingers as his eyes scanned the page. A piece of luggage, one that hadn’t fit beside Sam, was separating their bodies, and Bucky leaned his arm against it, propped his body on it. His clothes were rumpled and his socks were slack around his ankles, and his hair, much shorter than was customary for a man of impression, stood practically on end from his constantly running his hand through it. His posture bothered Steve – it had to be uncomfortable to be so folded up as Bucky was – never mind that it was far from what would be expected of someone of royal descent.

And yet, there was something charming about Bucky’s unkemptness. In truth, Steve had never cared much for cleanliness or order. His whole life had been one whirlwind of disorder, ever since his parents died in the Romanov kitchen, after the rebels set the palace on fire. His life had never been conducive to neatness or proper appearances. Steve could only imagine the circumstances under which Bucky had grown up in the orphanage, but something told him that regardless of whether too much or too little order had been enforced, Bucky’s resolve had kept him from sticking too strictly to anyone else’s opinions or guidelines but his own.

So, when Bucky kicked off his shoes and curled up further into a ball on the seat, Steve wasn’t quite sure why he opened his mouth. “Hey,” he said. “Get your feet off the seat. Quit sitting like that.”

Bucky didn’t even look over his shoulder. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“Oh, really? Who has your passport and your clothes?”

“Sam does.” His voice was glib.

Steve felt his face redden and his heart start to pound. Across the aisle, Sam began to stir.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked sleepily.

“This one thinks he can control what I’m doing.” Steve saw Bucky’s head jut in his direction.

“No one’s going to believe you’re a member – the  _most important_  member – of a royal family if you’re behaving like that,” Steve said.

“Oh, yeah?” Bucky closed his pamphlet and whirled around to face Steve. “And what, exactly, does a royal behave like? Have you ever met one before?”

He was up in Steve’s face, which made it weirdly hard for Steve to breathe. Bucky’s brows were heavy, but moved around on his face with expressive lightness; the set of his full lips was both boyishly playful and artfully determined. He was a fighter.

Steve stared him down, waited for something, maybe it was for him to give up or give in or stand down, but there was no change on Bucky’s face. And maybe it was his resolve, but Steve held his tongue about his history with the palace.

“Didn’t think so,” Bucky said finally, and he resettled himself in his seat as Sam laughed.

“You better watch yourself,” Sam said to Steve. “You’ve got a lot more on your hands than I think you thought.”

Steve rolled his eyes as Sam chuckled again to himself, and fell back to sleep. Once he was sure Sam had dozed off again, he fixed his eyes on Bucky’s back. His neck looked soft with downy hair, and the knobs of his vertebrae stuck out beneath his skin. Like every kid who had come of age under the new regime, it appeared that Bucky had gone woefully undernourished for at least some part of his life. Like Steve, he would probably be skinny all his life.

This realization made Steve feel a sense of camaraderie with Bucky that he hadn’t felt before. They shared some life experiences. Or, they might; Steve had to remind himself that that might not necessarily be true.

Bucky turned the page of the pamphlet, and, when he appeared to realize that he had finished reading, put it down and folded his hands behind his head with a sigh.

Steve eyed him cautiously. “Hey,” he said, which made Bucky turn around. “Where’d you learn to read, anyway?”

He gave Steve a once-over, and then turned around. Steve didn’t have time to feel snubbed before Bucky replied, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I just don’t. Petrovna said I arrived at the orphanage knowing how to read. She never taught me anything.”

“Who’s Petrovna?”

Bucky froze. He turned around again. “She was the warden at the orphanage I grew up at.”

Steve nodded solemnly, and then the train shook so hard it nearly threw him off his seat.

“Jesus,” Sam exclaimed, popping up off the floor.

Steve looked around. Sam was standing, brushing himself off. Bucky hadn’t moved. The luggage was tossed around, but no one seemed to be hurt by it.

“I’m gonna go see what that was all about,” Sam said, before ducking out of the cab and into the hallway.

Steve looked from the luggage to Bucky, to the window. The snowy landscape over which they were gliding appeared cold and unyielding. It was to be expected for Russia in December, but Steve shivered nonetheless.

Sam returned a moment later and closed the cab door behind him. “We’ve got a problem,” he said, and brandished the passports. “We’re not going to get cleared with these. They’re going around, and the neighbors’ are done in red ink.” Steve’s stomach sank.

“So?” Bucky asked.

“Ours are in blue,” Steve replied. The three of them looked at each other, and in a second they were scrambling around the car, pulling their stuff together and grabbing their luggage. In another, they were flying down their train car for the storage car.

“Here?” Bucky asked, when Steve set their stuff down behind a large wooden crate. “We can’t stay here, it’s freezing.”

“They’re not going to find us here, and we don’t want to be found,” Steve said. Bucky had been on his nerves before, but now he was scaring him. “If you want to be found and thrown in prison, be my guest.” Over the years, both Steve and Sam had heard things about the prison system’s so-called improvements since the deposition of the Romanovs. All of them had been varying degrees of horrifying.

Steve stared Bucky down until he slid onto the floor to sit. Then Steve turned to Sam.

“We need to figure out a plan,” Steve said, but as he spoke, a second loud crashing noise erupted from the car behind them, and the train felt like it was slowing down.

Steve whipped his head around and listened, but there was nothing to be heard underneath the cataclysmic sound of a third explosion.

“What the hell is going on?” Sam shouted. He was crouched down beside Bucky, and both of them had thrown their arms over their heads. “Get over here, Steve.”

“No,” Steve said. “I’m going to go see what’s happening.”

“Steve,” Bucky said. Steve ignored him. After the third explosion, the lock on the car door must broke, and the door swung wide open and was banging against the steel inside wall. Steve steadied it with his hand, and then knelt down and peered around outside the car.

The wind was so strong that his hair was swept off his face, felt as if it were going to be swept off his head. There was nothing to be seen on the car itself, but when he leaned a little further out of the car, he saw that the coupler between their car and the one behind it had been severed.

“We’re in trouble,” Steve said, but between the raging wind and the screech of the train’s wheels on the tracks, he was fairly sure neither Sam nor Bucky could hear him. He ducked back inside the train. “The coupler was severed,” he said. “We’re not connected to the rest of the train that’s behind us.”

Sam’s eyes widened; Bucky pressed his lips into a line. “What do we do?” the latter asked.

“There’s not much we can do. We’re on a decline right now, so the rest of the train will follow us, at least, but not for long.”

“Are we still connected to the rest of the train?” Sam asked. “Because if we’re not….” He got up and opened the door through which they had entered the storage car – and then immediately shut it, for the car in front of them had gone up in flames.

Steve sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. He heard Bucky stand up, and when he opened his eyes he saw out the window that the train was approaching a section of track that ran over a ravine.

“We’re not going that way,” Sam said.

“We can’t go that way, either,” Bucky said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “We can’t hop a broken coupler with fifty pounds of luggage apiece.”

The other two looked at Steve, who was chewing on the nail of his right thumb while he thought. “We’ll have to jump, then,” Steve said.

“Jump? Just where do you think we’re going to jump?” Bucky asked. He squared off against Steve; he was several inches taller than Steve was, but he seemed to understand that Steve was as formidable as he was, that Steve’s height and weight wasn’t going to put him at a disadvantage if it came down to a fight.

“Out the back door. We have a few minutes of flat track before we hit the ravine and after we get off the hill, and the car behind us will probably slow up after that. We should have plenty of time, but if we don’t make it, we can just wait to jump until after we pass the ravine.”

And then, as Steve pointed to the window behind Bucky’s head, he watched the track in the middle of the ravine be decimated by a fourth explosion.

“Something tells me that’s not an option anymore,” Sam said. “We’re going to have to do it now.”

Steve looked from Sam to Bucky, and back again, and then nodded. “We’ve got no choice.”

They gathered as many of their things as they could, and piled them beside the back door of the train car. Steve held the door open as Bucky and Sam pushed the large wooden crate in front of it to prop it open, and then they packed their belongings onto their bodies.

Steve was first in line to jump. The train was speeding down the side of the hill, pulled by momentum and pushed by sheer mechanical force, and the longer Steve looked out on the flashing white ground, the more afraid he became.

After a minute, he turned around to face the others. “Maybe we can slow this down.”

Both Sam and Bucky searched around for something to act as a brake, but it was Bucky who found the climbing anchor amid the various other parcels and suitcases.

“This could do the trick,” Steve said. They tied one end of a rope around the broken coupler, and the other on the climbing anchor, and they waited until the train behind them began to slow down, to leave distance between the cars.

“On my count,” Steve said. His heart was in his throat, but as he counted down, as he threw the anchor out to catch on the train tracks they had left behind, he became aware for the first time of what it meant to be alive.

He didn’t let go fast enough, and the rope yanked Steve out of the train so quickly, he barely had time to grab the ladder on the outside of the train.

“ _Steve, no!_ ” Beneath the deafening wind and the numbing cold, Steve could hear the lick of flames on the other side of the car, and the dry worries of the men on the inside. Steve closed his eyes and let himself soak in these sensations, and when he opened his eyes, he found Bucky leaning out the door and reaching for him, grabbing frantically at Steve’s closest hand.

Steve met him halfway, and together Steve made his way back inside the train.

The anchor had ripped up the tracks. The broken tracks created a flaming missile of the dozen remaining cars that lagged behind them. In a matter of minutes, Steve knew that the train and all of its passengers would be lifeless at the bottom of the ravine.

“We’ve got to go,” he said, though he wasn’t sure either Sam or Bucky had heard him. So he took Bucky’s hand in one of his own, and then grabbed onto Sam, and with a deep, cold breath in his lungs, he pulled them with him as he plunged into the snow.

 

_In St. Petersburg, the mottled man waits on the word of his demons. Equipped with explosives, he had sent them to destroy the tracks, crash the train on which the last living Romanov boy rode to Paris. He paced while he waited, but when his demons return, the mottled man stands very still on the bank of the Neva._

_Without a word, they show him what happened. How they altered the passports, tricked the conductors, rigged the tracks, blew up the coal car. They show him the Romanov boy and the outlaws the tall, dark one with the ease in his step and his smile, and the small skinny one with the ferocity in his eyes and heart. He watches the latter one shimmer as he talks to the Romanov boy, as he leads them out of their cab into the luggage car._

_The mottled man raises a fist when the skinny one falls out of the car, screams as he watches the Romanov boy pull him to safety. He descends back into the water, steaming, once he sees the three of them on a boat, waiting to disembark across the Baltic._

_There is time, he reminds himself. There is still time._


	4. Chapter 4

_Bucky_

The trip would have taken them only a week, had their train not derailed in the middle of the snowy Belarusian plain. Now, it was going to take them two, or three, if you counted the week it took them to get to the coast.

Two days earlier, they had boarded this cargo ship and set sail on the Baltic. Bucky had never been on the water before, not even on a raft or in a wooden fishing boat like the one Petrovna’s husband had owned. The salty air on his face and the swaying of the decks beneath his feet were exhilarating; he felt like standing on the edge of the railing and letting the rushing wind whip his clothes around on his body.

Steve and Sam, however, were less excited about sailing. While they traveled across the countryside, Bucky had learned a few things about Steve and Sam. Like that Sam, at some point in the past, had been the son of an advisor to the tsar himself. He, like Steve, had lost his parents during the revolution, at the siege of the palace that had slain the Romanov heirs. Or, at least, most of them. He had contacts in Paris, the kind that would bring them closer to the dowager princess’s inner circle. He had been on a ship before, many years ago.

Steve, like Bucky, had never sailed, but he didn’t have the legs for it. The first three hours of the trip, he was bent over the side, vomiting, while Sam laughed in derision.

“You’re going to ruin your insides if you keep blowing them up like that,” Bucky said when Steve returned from the railing for the fifth time.

“Or you’re going to drive me off of this boat with your stench,” Sam said, waving his hand in the air in front of his face. “You should be more careful of your clothes.”

Steve scowled at Sam as he took off his jacket. Bucky snickered. They were sitting around on barrels that were stacked near the bow, Sam reading a newspaper while Bucky watched the horizon. They had been talking earlier, over the lunch Steve had just purged, but the afternoon had quieted them. Now, the sun was setting, and Bucky stared off on a point somewhere just south of the sun itself, absorbing the last few rays of heat. All three of them were bundled up in their coats and hats and scarves, had blankets wrapped around them, but despite the cold, the fresh air was extremely preferable to the sour, stale air below decks in their rooms.

Bucky stood and leaned against the railing a few feet away from where Steve had stood minutes before. He could see for miles in every direction, and though it was still a way off from being completely dark, it was getting darker, and he was damned if he was going to waste an opportunity to see the world.

He couldn’t believe what he’d gotten himself into. His stomach had been filled with ice ever since he boarded that train out of St. Petersburg, and his attempts to thaw it out had proved very unsuccessful. If he thought about it for too long, he got scared – Steve and Sam were friendly, sure, but he knew nothing about them. Their auditions for the missing prince had been suspicious enough, but the false passports and their murky backgrounds threw Bucky for a loop. They were the exact kind of men Petrovna had always warned her kids about, the kind who sometimes snatched ignorant children off the streets and took them away, or the kind who lured them into dark alleys and returned them with an unspeakable darkness in their eyes.

But, Bucky supposed, he was no better than they were. There was much he couldn’t explain about himself, from his ability to read to his preference for rich foods and orchestral music. He had never tried to figure himself out. He had never been asked to. And this made his past just as murky as theirs.

“Hey,” Steve said beside him. He leaned farther over the edge and into Bucky’s line of vision. “What’s with the face?”

“What’s with what face?” Bucky asked.

Steve let out a short, sharp shot of air through his nose. It wasn’t quite a laugh. “What are you thinking about?”

Bucky looked over his shoulder. Sam was still reading behind them, apparently unaware of their conversation. There was no one else on deck. He turned back to Steve. “I’m just thinking about what Paris will be like.”

Steve eyed Bucky some more, a sly expression growing on his face. “Well, it’ll be short-lived, if we don’t get you acting like royalty soon enough.” He pushed off the railing and took a few steps away from Bucky.

This was getting old. Bucky had never intended to sign up for anything like this – there had been no mention of needing to look or act royal, or improving on his manners or his posture before they had left Russia. Now, it seemed like the only thing Steve could think to do in their down time.

“Why are you so concerned with how I act, or how I look?” Bucky asked. He caught Sam look over. “Even if I am the missing Romanov heir, what makes you think they’re going to care if I don’t talk the right way, or I don’t look the right way? Shouldn’t they be more concerned with the fact that I’ve returned to them? Won’t they know it’s me once I’ve arrived?”

He watched, confused and a little frustrated, as Steve and Sam shared an indecipherable look.

“What is it?” he prompted, feeling himself becoming more and more petulant. Until then, he had not known how tiring the trip had been, how his every muscle felt fatigued and limp beneath his clothes. It was suddenly as if he could barely hold himself upright; he sighed, and leaned a little harder against the railing.

“Well, let’s just say you’re not the only one who has claimed to be Prince James of the Romanov family,” Sam said.

“Er,” Steve said. “Why don’t we amend that and, say, consider you one of dozens of hopefuls, maybe even hundreds? So many people that the dowager princess herself no longer even sees her claimants anymore – they’re all screened by her cousin, Peggy?”

“ _What_?” Bucky said. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s another step,” Sam said. “One we may have omitted the first time we explained all this to you.”

Bucky searched both Sam’s and Steve’s faces for clues, suggestions, anything to indicate what was happening – and when he realized what they meant, both men closed their eyes. “I have to  _prove_ myself? To some  _stranger_?”

“She would be your family, if you passed,” Steve said.

Bucky slumped against the railing and hit the ground. “You guys never said anything about having to  _prove_  I’m the missing prince.”

“Hey, hey,” Steve said, crouching down to meet Bucky’s eye. “It shouldn’t be that big a deal. From what Sam’s told me, Peggy’s a sweet girl, she knows what she’s doing, and she’s not a sucker. She’ll grill you, probably, yeah. But she’s just looking out for the princess. That woman’s been through a lot, it seems, with all of these false Jameses running around.” He smiled, and Bucky felt weird about it. This wasn’t an occasion for smiling. “But think about it,” Steve continued, “at least now you know why I’ve been bugging you about decorum for the last few days.”

Bucky groaned, then, because everything made a little bit more sense.

“Come on.”  Steve stood, then offered him a hand up. “You’ll do fine.”

Bucky took his hand and stood. He was very close to Steve, much closer than he’d been in all their time together. He was a few inches taller than Steve was, not a whole lot, but enough to force Steve to tilt his head back to look Bucky in the eye. For some reason, this made Bucky grin.

“Say, do you know how to waltz?” Steve asked then. He took Bucky’s hand again, and shouted at Sam, who had resumed reading, to count them in.

“I never learned how to dance,” Bucky said. “There was never any reason to in the orphanage.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll be okay,” Steve said, and Bucky wondered if Steve had just started subconsciously reading insecurity into everything he said. “Follow my lead.”

Bucky watched the floor as Steve’s long skinny feet started gliding around the ship’s wooden deck, and tried to match his own steps with Steve’s. After a moment, they fell into sync, and Bucky was wheeling around to an inaudible tune only he and Steve seemed able to hear. With the rocking of the boat and their rotating, he felt himself getting sick, so he closed his eyes, tried to focus on his feet and the sound of the music in his ears. It was familiar, this music, and comforting, something akin to what he always imagined a mother’s hug to feel like, or the sound of Petrovna’s daughter’s voice on nights that Petrovna allowed her to read to the orphans before bed. It lulled him into a half-sleep, and soon enough he felt himself begin to slump over a little on his feet.

“Hey, easy there.” It was Steve, and he was propping Bucky up on his shoulder with whatever strength he had.

Bucky inhaled, regaining awareness. “Sorry,” he said. He ran a hand, the one that had been on Steve’s shoulder, over his face and blinked a few times. “I didn’t realize how sleepy I was.”

“That’s okay.” Steve’s voice was quiet, and his face was close. Bucky, fighting this strange and sudden bout of exhaustion, met Steve’s eyes through the blur of sleep. They were a nice blue, clear and even-toned, catching the moonlight with ease. He had a smattering of freckles over his nose, and his brows were arched in half-surprised, his mouth open a little, as if he were waiting for something to be revealed.

To their right, Sam let out a snore that, in the tepid silence that had preceded it, seemed earth-shattering. Bucky and Steve leapt apart, startled by the noise, and when they had determined its source, they looked at each other and chuckled in embarrassment. Bucky had not been aware of how close he and Steve had been dancing until he stood apart from him, felt the absence of his warmth against his stomach.

“Maybe we should get to bed,” Steve suggested. “It’s later than I thought it was.”

“Good idea.” Together, they gathered their belongings and hoisted a drowsy Sam to his feet. Once they were below decks, and Sam was tucked haphazardly into the top bunk in their quarters, Steve muttered something about going to ask someone about the duration of their trip, and Bucky found himself alone.

He had exactly one change of clothes, which was meant for sleeping, but in the hassle that occurred after their unceremonious disembarking from the train, he was no longer sure of the bag in which those clothes were packed. He began rummaging, cursing Sam’s rather stupid idea of packing all of their stuff together instead of in separate bags. When he found them, rolled into a ball at the bottom of what had originally been Steve’s knapsack, something hard fell from their center when he shook them out.

He stooped, mid-undress, to pick up what had fallen. It was a gold and green box, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, and expensive-looking. He eyed it curiously; something about its shape and the feel of it in his hands triggered the feeling of mysterious familiarity to which he was growing unnervingly accustomed. So much about this trip, about Paris and the palace and even Steve, was so inexplicably familiar to him.

He found a hinge while inspecting it, but no latch. He bent down to catch the moonlight that shone in from the small porthole in their quarters, and as he did so, the pendant on his necklace swung out between his knees and glinted up at him.

That, too, was green and gold, he remembered. He took the pendant in his hand and, as if his hands did not belong to him, raised it to the box and inserted the pendant’s edge into a hidden lock at the front of the box.

The top popped, and as he readjusted his hold on the box to allow it to open, he heard a thin stream of music wind out from inside it.

It was the music he had heard as he and Steve waltzed on the upper deck. He closed his eyes and began to hum along, once again lulled into a trance by the music. He recalled something, a brilliant gold room with red walls, and a woman’s voice singing,  _Once upon a December._

The door to their quarters opened, and Bucky straightened himself out and threw the closed music box back into the bag in which he’d found it.

“Hi,” he said to Steve, who looked him up and down in confusion.

“Hi,” Steve replied, a tinge of hesitation in his voice. He went to the swaddle of blankets on the floor, where he had elected to sleep so that Sam and Bucky could rest properly.

“A-are you sure you’ll be comfortable there?” Bucky asked, feeling as if he needed to explain himself, though he wasn’t even sure Steve had seen him looking at the music box.

“I’ve slept on worse before,” Steve said. “And with fewer blankets.” He curled right up into the corner of the room and turned away from Bucky. “Sleep well.”

“You too.” Bucky stood there a moment, watching as Steve’s breathing evened out, before slipping into bed himself.

 

_Their boat enters the North Sea before his demons catch up to it. The mottled man began to fear that the Romanov boy was learning too much long before he set sail, and now he has for sure – the mottled man can see so from within his reliquary. The mottled man recalls the Romanov boy as a child, when he was known as Father Alexander, and was charged with the boy’s religious education. He was smart, and quick – there had never been time to dawdle as his demons have, and now he is paying the price of his contentedness._

_The mottled man calls a storm from the north. A gale, a tempest, something which will throw the ship into disarray, something which will make the Romanov boy’s overdue demise all the more believable._

_The demons come to the boy in a dream. The mottled man watches as they lead him out of bed, to the upper decks, while he sleeps. They have fettered his mind successfully, and the mottled man, entrenched in his riverbed throne, lets out a laugh._

_But while he laughs, he misses the boy’s companion rise from his sleep and pursue him. He misses the boy’s companion running frantic through the ship, calling out a name the mottled man would never recognize._

_He does not miss the boy’s companion find him on the swaying decks of their boat, walking the railing in his bare feet. He does not miss the boy’s companion pulling him down, waking him, taking the thoroughly confused, quietly afraid Romanov boy back to bed, out of the storm._

_That is when he screams._

_He will have to return._


	5. Chapter 5

_Steve_

By the time they made it to Peggy’s house, Steve had almost stopped remembering the horror he had felt at seeing Bucky standing on the ledge of the boat.

He had not sleepwalked the entire trip, not in their whole time together, until then, three nights earlier. He had overheard the crew the next morning, talking about how nothing in their almanacs or weather reports or even on the horizon, had predicted the storm they had found themselves engulfed in. The more Steve ran it through his mind, the less he was convinced that everything about that night had been coincidence. If he thought about it too long, he began to grow alarmed by the number of unforeseen obstacles they had faced, the things they had overcome to get to Paris from St. Petersburg. He had known before they left that such a journey was not going to be easy, but he had never thought of this kind of difficulty, nothing to this degree of seeming divine intervention.

It was these ruminations that made Steve most uneasy when they arrived on Peggy’s doorstep, a house on the outskirts of Paris that, according to Sam, she kept alone, with her two small dogs, and a cleaning woman named Angie with whom she had been friends for years.

“Samuel!” she exclaimed when she opened the door. “It’s so good to see you.” Steve watched as they embraced, and tried not to feel as out of place as he felt. “Come in, come in. These must be the friends you mentioned.”

“Yes,” Sam said, kissing her cheek. “This is Steven, and this is Bucky.”

“Steve,” he said, extending a hand to her. He kissed its back.

“Lovely to meet you,” Peggy said. He nodded, and then followed Bucky and Sam into the house, where Peggy had Angie set them up in her living room.

Steve accepted tea. This leg of the trip was Sam’s responsibility; he was the former nobleman, the one with the connections to the dowager princess’s cousins, like Peggy. He was of little help here. Everything, aside from the actual arrangement of things, was up to Bucky.

Despite his disposition against it, Steve believed in Bucky. He had begun feeling it after he pulled him to safety on the train, and it had grown considerably since then. There was trouble in believing in people, Steve knew, but there was no extracting himself from this situation now. There were ten million rubles for him at the end of it, as long as he continued to keep the slightest hope in Bucky for the time being.

He watched as Peggy, entering from the other room, put a tender hand on Angie’s shoulder as she passed. It was more intimate than he would have expected between an employer and her help, but Peggy began speaking before he had time to process it.

“So, I hear you have a proposition for me?” she asked Sam. “Let’s hear it, even though I’m sure I could guess if you made me.”

Sam smiled. “Take a crack at it, if you’re so confident.”

Steve felt a twinge of apprehension at Sam’s familiarity with her, but Peggy smiled back easily, and Steve calmed down. Across the room, he saw Bucky eyeing him uncertainly, as if he was wondering whether or not to inquire about Steve’s mental state.

“All right, then,” Peggy said. “I think  _you_  think this is the missing Romanov boy. And you brought him here because…?”

“Because there’s no getting directly to the queen anymore,” Steve interjected, leaning forward a little in his seat. He cleared his throat.

“Well, if you know that, then certainly you know why,” Peggy said.

“She’s seen dozens of people claiming to be James,” Sam said.

“More like hundreds,” Peggy corrected. “What makes you think you’ve got the one?”

“Isn’t that for you to decide?” Sam asked. Steve felt his heartbeat elevate, and he repositioned himself in his chair. He was beginning to think it was overstuffed, and that was why he didn’t seem able to get comfortable.

Peggy gave Bucky a once-over, which, in Steve’s mind, appeared cynical. “I suppose it is,” she said. “Will you excuse us, then, boys? Your charge and I have some talking to do.”

Steve couldn’t get out of the chair fast enough. He practically ran into the drawing room on the other side of the house, after Angie caught him at the door and saw him and Sam inside.

There was plenty of room to pace, and, apparently, no expectation of him to remain calm any longer. Angie stood by the entrance to the room, and Sam sat on one of the couches near the window, which overlooked the garden. He was so nervous his palms were sweating, and he felt utterly unable to relax.

After an hour of this, Angie spoke up.

“Is there something I can get for you, sir? Some water, or some tea, maybe?”

She smiled when Steve looked at her. “Perhaps some water would be nice.”

She left the room, then, and Steve stood in one place for the first time since their arrival. Sam, who had been dozing, woke up and regarded him with an amused expression.

“Haven’t calmed down yet?” he asked.

Steve ran a hand through his hair, then rubbed the back of his neck. “I can’t stop imagining what will happen if he doesn’t pass this. I mean, we’ve come so far, we’ve done so much – are we really willing to let this all go?”

“I’m afraid we’ll have no choice,” Sam said. “But, hey, we’ll be in Paris if things go south. We’ll still be out of St. Petersburg, and maybe Peggy will be able to help us.” He leaned forward in the chair then, confidentially. “If you’re worried about me leaving you, I can assure you that won’t happen.”

Steve smiled, only half relieved. Angie returned with some water, which Steve drank as if he had not done so in weeks.

 

Several more hours passed. Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion, Steve collapsed beside Sam on the couch. Angie woke them up when Peggy gave her the signal that she and Bucky had finished.

“I think you’ve got a real shot here,” Peggy said excitedly upon entering the drawing room. Steve, who was rubbing sleep out of his eyes, took a moment to comprehend this.

“Really?” Sam said before he could.

“Yes. He’s in the other room now, I’m afraid I tired him out. But he answered all of my questions correctly, and with such great detail.”

Steve allowed himself a smile. “So that’s it, then, right? We can meet with her?”

Peggy pressed her lips together. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid Princess Natasha is not willing to see such contenders any longer. And in spite of all the detail he delivered, there is nothing I can do about that,” she said. Steve’s heart sank.

“So we did come here for nothing,” Steve said, feeling rage flare in the center of his chest.

“Well, all is not lost,” Peggy said. She walked dramatically from the entrance to stand before them. “Natasha  _does_  enjoy the Russian ballet quite a lot. And tomorrow night, she  _will_  be in attendance, in the balcony suites.”

Steve looked from Peggy to Sam, who also seemed to understand.

“Looks like we’ll have to get you boys some new clothes,” Peggy said, a smile on her red lips.

 

They returned from the city after dinner, with new clothes, three new tuxedos, and a carefully constructed sense of renewed hope. Peggy retired upon entering her house, and Angie set everyone up in the guest room downstairs.

After a shower and a change, Steve fell into bed beside Bucky without qualms. Sam, who had been making jokes about Bucky’s elevated sociopolitical position all night, agreed to take the armchair in the corner, since he wasn’t in the business of, “disallowing royals their right to comfortable beds.”

Steve would have taken the floor if Bucky had not, with some discretion, invited him to sleep in the bed with him. “You’ve taken plenty of nights on the floor, you deserve it as much as I do,” he had said, while they waited for Peggy to unlock her front door. Steve had not argued.

“How are you feeling?” Steve asked, when Bucky returned from the bathroom, smelling of Peggy’s floral soap, as Steve did. Sam had not yet returned from the kitchen, where he was getting himself a glass of water.

“I’m exhausted,” Bucky said. His tone was light, however, and as he crawled into bed, Steve began to feel happier himself. “But I feel better than I did this afternoon.”

“Did something happen?”

“Nothing bad, exactly. At least, I don’t think it was bad this afternoon.”

Steve propped himself on an elbow, as if that would make him listen better.

“I saw something. A fire, I think it was. And a young boy, taking me by the hand, saying he would show me the way out, to safety. And then he opened a wall,” Bucky said, and in six words, Steve felt the world crashing down around him.

“Huh,” he managed.

“Strange, right? I’m not sure where it came from, or what it means, but it seemed to make Peggy happy.”

Steve slid out of bed then, his heart racing so quickly, he could no longer lay down.

“Where are you going?” Bucky asked from behind him.

“Getting some water,” he said, as he exited the room, and ran head-first into Sam in the hallway.

“Whoa,” Sam said. “I know it’s dark, but you have to be careful.”

"Shh,” Steve said. “Follow me to the kitchen a second. Be quiet.” He led Sam back to the kitchen despite Sam’s whispered protests.

“Wait a second,” Sam said. “Is this about the interview? Because I’ve got some things to tell you, too. Good things.”

“This came up in the interview?” Steve said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just continue.” Steve poured himself a glass of water and drank it down in two gulps.

“While you and Bucky were trying on clothes, Peggy told me that in their interview, he recalled to her something about a fire, and escaping with a boy through a hidden doorway through –”

“A wall?” Steve filled in.

Steve couldn’t see Sam’s face in the dark, but he heard surprise in his voice. “How did you know?”

“Because I was the boy who opened the wall,” Steve said. The air between and around them began to thicken. It became hard to breathe. “I worked in the kitchens, as a boy. I was helping out the night the palace was sieged, and I led the prince and his grandmother to safety when Father Alexander led his followers through the grounds.”

There was silence, deafening silence. And then Sam said, “Do you know what this means?” And Steve said, “He’s the real prince. We’ve found the heir to the Russian throne.”

           

_Bucky_

The theatre was palatial, to say the least. Bucky had never encountered such grandeur before this evening – from the lush décor, to the attendees themselves, everywhere Bucky looked he saw beauty. It made him nervous, unsure of whether he was really meant for such a place, or if he had truly come from a family of such means that this kind of outing was typical. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it, which only made matters worse.

Peggy had acquired seats in the balcony for Bucky, Steve, and Sam, but she was sitting across from them, in the dowager princess’s balcony seat. A quick glance and some direction from Sam told Bucky that the seat was more of an alcove, draped in velvet curtains and set back from the audience. She was clearly not trying to be seen by anyone she did not want to see herself, which made Bucky wonder about his own chances of being able to see her. They had a plan – Peggy and Steve had worked out a whole scheme for getting the dowager princess to agree to see him – but Bucky wasn’t sure it was foolproof. Could they be trusted? What if his memory failed him when he needed it most? What would he do in Paris if his family weren’t there after all? He was not sure he could go on living in the way he had before all this, with only a cloudy and opaque past behind him, and nothing in the world to tie him down. She had to remember him.

These thoughts ran through his mind so fast he could not keep his hands still. He was not sure when this had suddenly become so important to him – only weeks ago, he was laughing about it, barely agreeing to help two strangers in an insane plan so that he could get himself to Paris – but it was, it was, and he had to succeed. He had no other choice.

Their last-minute tickets had put Bucky and Steve’s seats in the row ahead of Sam’s. Bucky tried not to read too much into this, but the more he considered it, the less he thought the splitting of their group was coincidental.

Bucky shook his leg through the first act. About halfway through, he switched to tapping his fingers against the armrest he shared with Steve. It was less disruptive, he thought, than to bounce his leg and shake the whole row of seats. At least, he thought so until Steve reached over and took his hand, steadied it.

Bucky tore his eyes from the stage and found Steve gazing at him with such gravity he was sure the glance could not have been accidental. Steve’s eyes blazed in the blue light from the stage, as he entwined his fingers in Bucky’s.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Steve whispered. And then, as quickly as Bucky had turned toward him, Steve looked away, back at the stage.

It was enough to fortify him. He dared venture to think that, perhaps, if this didn’t work out for the best, he might not be alone in Paris.

Their plan was to approach the dowager princess at intermission, so when the dancers exited the stage, Bucky felt his heart plummet as the house lights went up.

He turned to Steve, who was looking at him again.

“Come on,” Steve said. “I guess it’s time.”

Bucky nodded. He and Steve stood, and followed Sam out of the house and through the hallways, to the dowager princess’s suite.

When they came in sight of the door, Bucky froze.

“Hey,” Steve said, when he realized Bucky wasn’t moving. “Come on, everything’s going to be fine.” His voice was calm, soothing, a tone Bucky had not heard him use before.

“You look tense,” Steve said beside him.

Bucky snorted, shifted his weight on his feet. “I wonder why.”

“Hey,” Steve said. Bucky felt a hand rise behind him and clamp down on his shoulder. He met Steve’s eyes. “Easy. You’ll be fine. You’ve already passed things with Peggy, and most people don’t. She’s seen  _so_  many fakes. You have this. I know you have this.”

Somehow, Steve’s other hand had found its way onto Bucky’s right shoulder, and was kneading the muscle there beneath his suit. Steve’s face was very close to his own, and once more Bucky was accosted by the freckles on his nose, his ridiculously long eyelashes and his blue, blue eyes, convincing him that he would be okay, that this would work out. He felt an unspeakable, almost alarming attraction to Steve then. He had never been this close to another man before – some girls had been this close, but the men’s faces he had seen this close to his own had been figments of his dreams, of his desires. And they had all had these same blue eyes.

“Look, I’ll go in first and announce you properly,” Steve said. He turned around and had his hand on the doorknob when Bucky said, “Steve.”

Steve turned around. Bucky could feel Steve’s warm breath on his cheek as he spoke.

“Yes?” Steve said.

“I just wanted to…”

“Yes?” Steve drew out the word, as if it would draw out the rest of Bucky’s sentence. His face alit with the most tender of inquisitive looks as he leaned closer to Bucky.

Bucky waffled. He was so close to Steve, so aware of his warmth and his electricity – it was exciting. He felt obliged to admit to his feelings to Steve, whatever they were, because he felt this way. It was only right.

But he had never done it before. He had never been through quite so much with any one person before, and the pit of his stomach gurgled with this draught of emotion with which he was so unfamiliar. And he was so nervous already, he didn’t think he could take it if these feelings were rejected, too.

So he said, “I just wanted to thank you, I guess. We’ve been through so much together. Yes, I wanted to thank you.”

Bucky watched Steve’s face widen, and then drop a little. “Oh. Well,” he said, and then turned away, almost as if he were embarrassed. Bucky turned away too, fully mortified at himself.

“Bucky,” he heard. He turned back around, and Steve’s face was close to his once more.

“Yes?”

Steve paused. “I just wanted to wish you … good luck, I guess.” He laughed nervously, and then said. “So, good luck. Here goes.”

Steve disappeared inside. He took a shaky breath inwards. He tried to run a hand through his hair, but then, remembering the wax he had put in it, leaned in closer to the crack in the doorway instead. He strained to hear the voices on the other side of the door.

Steve and Peggy were feigning their argument, as planned. He smiled to himself as Steve’s voice became florid and grandiose in his announcement, and Peggy’s grew shrill and pointed as she rejected him.

Then he heard a third, muffled voice. He couldn’t quite make it out, couldn’t quite place it, until he realized through all his frantic energy and nerves, that it was the dowager princess herself.

 _“Please,”_  he heard Steve say.  _“If you’ll just let me –”_

He was cut off by the dowager princess, who said something about wishing to live out her days in peace.

There was silence, then Peggy escorting Steve to the door, and then more silence. Bucky’s heart pounded.

 _“I’ve had enough! I don’t care how much you’ve fashioned this man to look like him, act like him, sound like him – in the end, it never is him,”_ he heard the dowager princess say.

 _“This time it_ is _him!”_  Steve said.

_“Steve. I’ve heard stories about you. You’re that con man from St. Petersburg who held auditions from the palace to find a James lookalike.”_

Bucky’s heart dropped out of his stomach. The world went quiet, and then before he knew it, he watched Steve be thrown bodily from the dowager princess’s suite and back out into the hallway.

He turned at once to face Steve.

“It was all a lie,” he said, only just beginning to believe it himself. Steve opened his mouth to deny it, but Bucky cut him off. “You used me. I was just part of your con to get her money?”

“No,” Steve said. Bucky advanced on him, but he kept pushing back. “Look, it may have started out that way, but –” Bucky turned away, began walking out of the theater. He heard Steve pursuing him. “– everything is different now, because you’re the real James. You are!”

“Stop it.” They were shouting now. Bucky had never seen such indignation and repugnance in a man who was so guilty. It angered him. “From the very beginning, you lied.” He pushed Steve away, and continued out of the opera house. He heard Steve yelling after him, shouting about how he really was James, that Steve was the boy who had worked in the kitchens and opened the wall, but Bucky was tired of hearing it. He was tired of everything.

“Everything you’ve said is a lie! And I not only believed you, I actually –” Bucky fell silent. The entirety of the last few weeks poured out before him like a paper fan. All of his recovered memories, all of his recollections of Christmases in the palace, of its siege, of his grandmother herself – all of it was a lie. All of it had been planted in his mind by Steve, who had lied to him, taken advantage of him. He had been duped, and in the valley of his chest he felt devastated. When he tuned back in, Steve was still talking, so he said, “Stop,” and then walked away again.

Steve caught his hand. “Bucky, listen to me.”

“No,” Bucky said, trying to shake Steve off of him. When he wouldn’t let go, he shouted, “Leave me alone,” and slapped Steve across the face before running out into the clear, dark Parisian night.

 


	6. Chapter 6

_Steve_

He ran out after Bucky, but though the streets were mostly empty, he was nowhere to be found.

Sam and Peggy were still inside. It was too late to walk around, especially dressed as he was, without risking a mugging. The shops had long since closed, except for a loud bar at the end of the street, but Steve didn’t feel like going anywhere raucous.

He had ruined this whole night. He sat down on the steps of the opera house and put his head in his hands, ashamed at himself for lying, for letting Bucky overhear him, for all the little moments in his life of sin that had led him to this piteous one. He was tired, but even more so, he was disappointed in himself.

The music box, which he had brought as proof of Bucky’s existence, weighed down the left pocket of his jacket. He hadn’t been sure what to expect when he set out for Paris, nearly a month ago. Ten million rubles, of course, but that was it, the lone shining beacon of the future he was running towards. Had St. Petersburg really been so dark that he had clambered as foolhardily as he had for Paris? He liked to think he had more substance than that, but perhaps not. A life of poverty and scheming had made him weak to the allure of money, of financial stability, of great personal wealth – and it had made him weaker than he would ever like to admit.

There was another problem as well. He was not only disappointed in his weakness, but in the vast pool of emotions that had welled in the bottom of his heart since Bucky had entered his life. Money had been Steve’s focus for so long, he had denied himself women’s company for most of his life, and he had ignored the possibility of gaining romance or affection in favor of acquiring wealth first. He had never really been interested in women sexually, either, though he wasn’t sure whether it was because he _was_ interested in men. Maybe it was both. Regardless, the rest of the night had held a certain intrigue in its air, and there was something about the charm of Bucky’s sly smiles and sultry blue eyes that had captured Steve utterly.

All these thoughts flew around in Steve’s head like a flurry of frenzied bats. He had to fix these problems he had started – it was the only way to make himself feel better. Even if he didn’t win Bucky back, he couldn’t live with the knowledge that his and Bucky’s last encounter had ended with a slap.

He decided, just moments before the ballet was to let out, that he would wait for the dowager princess. A car, much fancier than anything he had seen on the streets of Paris, pulled up as his plan unfolded in his mind, and without being noticed, Steve hid beside the staircase to the theatre. As the patrons let out, Steve kept an eye on the car, and when the driver exited his seat to wait for the dowager princess to arrive, he waited for most of the other attendees to disperse before sneaking around the car and sliding into the car.

The dowager princess left last. She descended the stairs with her purple silk gown trailing behind her, and just as the driver had helped her gather her train and closed her door, Steve gunned the engine and took off.

“Madame, you must listen to me,” Steve said after she let out a yelp of fear.

“Who are you?” He felt her breath on his neck as she peered around to see his face. “Steven. Take me back to the theatre at once!”

He spoke over her. “You just have to talk to him, that’s all I’m asking –”

“I told you, I have already seen enough Prince James impersonators –”

“This isn’t an impersonator, this is the real thing, I can promise you –”

“You will do no such thing, I know your type, and I know your history!”

“All you have to do is _listen_ , just for five minutes –”

“This is a crime! Kidnapping a former royal will get you hanged –”

“You won’t think so once you’ve reunited with your long-lost grandson.” Steve stopped the car short, and the dowager princess’s head jerked forward. They had arrived at Peggy’s house, where Peggy and Sam were returning themselves.

Natasha eyed Steve cursorily. He was breathing heavy from adrenaline, wondering to himself if this would be the crime that really got his head removed, if she would report him even after she reunited with James, and he would be finished.

“Please,” Steve said. “I don’t even want the money anymore. I just –” His voice faltered. He looked into the house, saw a light on in the bedroom he and Bucky had shared the night before. He produced the music box. “I just want you both to be happy.”

Natasha, for all her pomp and grace, looked a bit surprised at this. She took it from Steve and examined it. “Where did you get this?” she asked.

“Please,” he said. “I know you’ve been hurt, but it’s possible he has been just as alone as you have all these years.”

“Five minutes.” Steve, feeling light in his shoes, got out and led her to the front door.

 

_Bucky_

He had returned to Peggy’s house with the intention of gathering what little he still had and leaving Paris entirely. The entire walk from the opera house, he thought of places to go – Berlin, Vienna, Prague, anywhere but St. Petersburg – but as soon as he walked into the room he’d stayed in the previous night, he fell apart.

He cried, a little, sitting on the edge of the bed he and Steve had slept in. In all the years he’d spent at the orphanage, even under Petrovna’s watchful, frugal gaze, he had never been taken advantage of. He had been entirely self-sufficient, wholly capable of independence. It had been lonely, sure, but that was what this trip had meant to cure all along, even before he met Steve and Sam. What truly ruined him, he knew, was that he had trusted Steve so much.  It was foolish of him to have done so as blindly as he had; Steve was a con man, a notorious scammer and liar, and somehow Bucky had not seen fit to be wary of him. Steve was supposed to be charming, supposed to have an allure about him that made him intriguing and mysterious. Hadn’t Bucky been fighting to purge himself of mystery all his life? Hadn’t he had his share of mystery and the unknown? He had thought so for so long, and yet he had fallen for Steve, all of his tricks and all of his scams, and especially for Steve himself.

He sat on the bed for what felt like hours, attempting to pull himself together, and falling apart each time. Angie had heard him come in, and, with the same friendly tact he had detected on her earlier in their visit, she brought him a glass of water and patted his shoulder without saying anything.

Once he reached one of his calm lulls, he drank down the water and stood to pack. He would go to the train station and see which train was leaving soonest, and that would be how he decided his next step.

He was throwing his clothes into his knapsack when there was a knock on the door.

“Go away,” he said. A second knock came, and though he repeated himself, the door swung open, and in came an old woman in a long purple gown.

“Oh,” Bucky said. He wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he bowed awkwardly, and then straightened.

The dowager princess closed the door behind her. “Good evening,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were –”

“I know exactly who you thought I was,” she said, not without a hint of distaste in her tone. “Now who, exactly, are you?”

Bucky felt lightheaded, a little lost for the world. The woman in front of him, with her cane and her long glittering dress, was unmistakably familiar to him. But he was not quick to fall on his instincts this time around.

“I was hoping you would be able to tell me,” he said, and she chuckled.

“My dear, I am tired of being tricked and hurt,” she said. She went further into the bedroom, to the window that overlooked the garden. She looked at the suitcase that lay open on the floor. “I suppose the money does not interest you, either?”

He shrugged, though she was looking out the window and could not see him. Every one of his nerve endings was alive. “I just want to know who I am. I’ve spent years in the dark, and I just –”

“You want to know whether you belong to a family,” she said, and turned around. “My family.”

He had never quite been able to put to words the empty feeling in his chest, but here she had done it in a moment, with one simple word Bucky had used rarely, if ever, in his own life.

She regarded him with her hard brown eyes. “You are a fabulous actor,” she said. “But I’ve had enough of this.”

His heart sank. Twice tonight he had been let down, now, and twice he had, for reasons he could not control, allowed himself to become invested in things in which he did not have a say. As she passed him on her way out of the bedroom, he smelled the faintest bit of peppermint on her.

“Peppermint,” he said, as she walked past. She stopped, her back still to him.

“An oil, for my hands,” she said.

“I spilled a bottle once, on a carpet. And it smelled like peppermint forever, just like you.” He looked at her back as he said this, and traveled miles away in his mind, to a time he could not place, when the world was larger and a pair of small, grubby hands he had not seen before knocked over a gold and glass vial of viscous oil, and spilled onto a red carpet.

She turned around then, and faced him square on.

He felt very dizzy, but he kept talking. “I would lie there, when you were gone. I would lie there and breathe because you had left, and I missed you.” He put a hand to his head, wavered on his feet, and Natasha walked over to steady him.

When he swayed, the necklace, which he had worn over his tuxedo shirt at Steve’s request, gleamed in the lamplight.

“What is this?” Natasha said, taking the pendant in her hands and turning it over.

He blinked, and looked at the pendant in her hands. “Oh, I’ve had this since … since, well, before I can remember. I’ve always had it, even when I lived in the orphanage.”

“May I?” she asked, and then lifted the delicate chain over his head. She turned it over in her hands, and Bucky watched as her face began to change. “This was our secret, James’s and mine.” He was silent as she pulled out a music box, green and gold, familiar as everything else had been that evening.

“The music box,” he said. A whoosh of memory came to him then, and before he knew it, he was humming a tune, the same tune that had played when he had entered the ballroom in the palace, the first time he had met Steve and Sam.

Natasha joined in humming, and then, with eyes full of tears, she said, “James,” and wrapped her arms around his neck.

 xxx

_Out the window of the boy’s borrowed bedroom, the mottled man watched in horror as the old queen reunited with her beloved grandson. He watched, crimson with rage, as together they returned to the queen’s apartment and shared memories._

_He had failed. He had failed, and would be punished – unless. Unless._


	7. Chapter 7

_Steve_

Bucky left Peggy’s house that night, and he began his stay in the dowager princess’s house. Sam had arranged to begin his own life in Paris after the night of the ballet, and had taken up residence in Peggy’s house with her permission until he had found suitable quarters.

Steve had been squatting. He could not allow himself to live in Peggy’s house when he had so disappointed Bucky and himself. Though he had told Sam where he was, he had cautioned him to stay away, to forget about him as he deserved and move on with his life, the way Steve was doing, and was sure Bucky would soon do as well. For the most part, Sam obeyed, until one evening when he brought word from the dowager princess herself.

“She would like to thank you,” Sam said, standing in the alleyway Steve had been sleeping in for the last two nights. “Or, rather, she would like to thank you properly for bringing her grandson back to her.”

“I don’t want any money,” he said.

“Then you can refuse it. But I do think you should see her,” Sam insisted. “Not many people deny former royalty.”

Steve agreed, after a bit more persuasion, to see her, and wash up at Peggy’s. Once he was cleaned up, Sam accompanied him to the dowager princess’s house, where she received him in her personal parlor.

He was aware that, somewhere on the grounds, likely in the palace, Bucky was doing something, preparing for the unveiling party thrown in his honor that was at the end of the week, or reading, or learning about Romanov history from a governess. He was somewhere, and close, and this knowledge made Steve even more antsy than his heightened con artist’s shiftiness was already making him.

When the dowager princess arrived, Steve bowed. “You sent for me, Your Grace?”

She snapped her fingers, and a man arrived carrying a chest that, when he opened it, Steve saw was filled with money.

“Ten million rubles, as promised you,” she said, with a flourish of her left hand.

“I don’t want the money,” Steve said.

“Please.”

“No, really,” Steve insisted. “I came here only to apologize for hurting you, and to promise to stay out of your lives from now on.”

The dowager princess looked surprised. “Surely you must want something.”

He pressed his lips together, and turned away a little from the dowager princess. “What I want is not something I think you can give,” he said to the floor.

He heard the dowager princess simper beside him. “He needs time to adjust.”

Steve nodded. “Just promise me he’ll have his home.”

“He does.”

“And I will keep away from you.” He took a deep breath then, and pushed his hair back from his forehead. When he looked back at the dowager princess, she had a look of recognition on her face.

“You,” she said. She took a step closer, and Steve froze. “You were the boy …”

He pressed his lips together, shoved his hands in his pockets. “I should go.”

“You were the boy, on the last night in the palace. You helped us escape,” she said, moving closer and closer as she spoke.

“Tell me he is happy,” Steve said. He backed away from her, moved toward the door.

She stopped her advance, and a sorrowful look fell on her features. “I wish that I could.”

After exchanging a few more courtesies, he excused himself from the dowager princess’s company, and began to leave the house.

In the foyer, he found Bucky – or, now it was James, he supposed – passing through in a suit that had been tailored to his specifications. Steve could not help but admire the set of his shoulders, the way the jacket strained a little across them as James fiddled with his cufflinks.

“Oh,” James said when he noticed Steve descending the stairs.

“Your grandmother called on me,” he said by way of greeting. “I’m … I was just leaving.”

James snorted. “Taking your reward money with you and running, hmm? Dashing off to Berlin or Nice, or maybe London?”

Steve grimaced. This was not the Bucky he had come to love – this was a nasty boy, this was a rude and disingenuous boy with whom Steve was not at all familiar. He felt slighted. “I’ll get out of your way now, Your Highness.”

He shrugged past James for the door, and kept his eyes to the ground as he did. A part of him wanted to scream that he hadn’t taken the money, that all that mattered to him in the world was that Bucky was happy, that his home was fulfilling and his memory returned, but every atom of his being propelled him forward, out of the house and into the street once more.

_Bucky_

Since he had recovered his memory, and Grandmama had reclaimed him as her grandson, her house had been atwitter with party planners, tailors, caterers, invitation designers. If he was to rejoin his lost family and take up the Romanov name once again, Grandmama said, he was going to have to be properly presented to society.

“Many of my friends are aware of the horrors I’ve experienced while trying to find you,” she had said on the evening in which she had announced her plans. “How are they supposed to know you’re the real you, unless I confirm it?”

She would throw a party, invite everyone from tsarist Russia, the French nobility, everyone who had money and a name. The papers would have it by the morning following the party, and then he would be official. Until then, his existence would be their secret.

He had not been allowed out of the house even to see Peggy, who had instead been invited to call on him three days after he disappeared from her house. It had been something of a shock to see Steve roaming the halls of this house, even though Bucky had known the dowager princess had planned on paying out the reward money. Grandmama’s house had become his refuge, his haven. Inside it, he was safe from the harrowing eyes of the public, the sense of being lost, the plebian woes of money and food and clothes. Inside it, he wanted for nothing.

At least, that is what he told himself night after night, as he lay in the soft bed in the room Grandmama had saved specially for him, all those years ago, and tried to kick thoughts of Steve out of his mind.

The day he ran into Steve in the house was exactly two weeks before his coming out party. Those intervening days were a flurry of activity, of picking china and learning how to tie bow ties and tasting toasting champagnes. There were so many new things to digest, so many new things to experience, that he really did almost push Steve out of his mind.

On the night of the ball, he leaned on the balcony railing and looked over his grandmother’s ballroom. There were over a hundred guests, milling about, carrying cocktails and catching up with whatever gossip they missed in the time they’d been apart. He remembered this much from his childhood, all of which, in the last few days, had revealed itself to him. He recalled sitting somewhere high above the rest of the party guests, not quite old enough to be a part of the conversation but desperately wanting to be a part of it. He had faith in these memories, he knew them to be true, and yet he felt horribly out of place in this tuxedo, freshly presented to society.

Grandmama glided up the balcony steps in her long ivory dress, her glittering tiara perched atop her pale red hair like a beacon. Bucky turned to greet her, take her hand kiss it as he had been taught. But when she approached him and he went forward with the custom, she frowned.

“Something the matter, Grandmama?” he asked.

She surveyed him as he had been surveying the crowd. “You tell me.”

He pressed his lips together and looked away from her, ashamed. “Everything is fine, Grandmama. I’m very glad to be here.”

“Nonsense.” She put a finger on his chin and turned his face back to hers. “Are you happy, dear? You should be happy. This is your night, and everyone seemed to enjoy your company. Yet, you seem rather distant.”

Bucky looked out over the crowd. They didn’t even seem to notice him anymore, and though he felt petulant for thinking it, how could it be a party for him if no one seemed interested in him? To these people, he was James, former crown prince of Russia, a relic of times gone by to be cherished and marveled at as such. Bucky was hidden away from them.

He could think of only one person from whom Bucky was not truly hidden. But he did not feel as though Grandmama would understand this feeling he had. In all his life, Bucky had never seen two men love one another the same way men were supposed to love women. He had not heard of it spoken, had never spoken about it himself. For all he knew, he was the only man in the world who had felt this way about another man, the way he felt about Steve.

Grandmama leaned forward confidentially. Bucky met her eyes. “Do you miss him?”

The bottom of his stomach fell open, and he felt its contents – mostly champagne and wine – flow into his body again. The same small surge of intoxication he had felt at his first sip rushed through his body tenfold. Did she know? Had she suspected something? Had he not been careful enough with his feelings? If he truly was the only man in the world who had so loved and desired another as he did, then he was an abomination. He was an atrocity. He could not expect Grandmama to continue welcoming him as she had been, if she found out about this.

She spoke again before he could regain his mental composure.

“You two spent quite a lot of time together these past few months. Traveled together, made plans, talked. Surely you became friends.”

He gazed at her with a calculated poise, trying to determine whether or not she had detected his moment of panic. But as long as he looked, he found nothing, not even a hint of suspicion or disgust.

“You wish he were here,” Grandmama continued. Then she turned from Bucky, and looked over her crowd again. He stared at her in profile, imagining her as a much younger woman, gazing over her subjects in this same manner: back straight, shoulders squared, head held high. Lacking her learned equanimity. Terrified.

She turned back to Bucky a moment later and looked him in the eye. “He didn’t take the reward, you know.”

Bucky cocked his head. “What?”

Grandmama shook her head. “I offered him the reward, for bringing you back. All ten million rubles, stacked in a chest or thrown in a sack, however he pleased. But he would not even accept my gratitude without my insistence.”

Bucky was stunned. “He didn’t take … anything?”

Grandmama shook her head again. “Not a single ruble.” Her gaze turned back out to her guests, whom she had virtually abandoned. “He said all he wanted was your happiness, and to be out of our lives forever.”

This time, it was not Bucky’s stomach that felt as if it had dropped out of him, but the floor from beneath his feet. He was suspended in zero gravity, floating in a sickening, tumultuous current of his emotions. Steve couldn’t leave Paris. Bucky wouldn’t let him.

“I must return to my party,” Grandmama said, pulling Bucky back to himself. She put her hand on his shoulder, as if to ground him. He locked eyes with her again. “Know that I believe you must choose the path that makes you happiest. This party, these people – they are here for me as much as they are here for you. Perhaps even more so.” She smiled sadly. “I have waited a long time to present my grandson to them. And now I have.”

She let her smile linger on her face a minute longer, before letting it fade as she turned to descend the stairs and rejoin her party, her features collected in a self-possessed stare.

Bucky milled around the balcony a while longer, making decisions. And then he ducked out through a side door into the garden, and out into the night once more.


	8. Chapter 8

_His luck could not have been better. Here he was, in Paris, lurking beneath the Pont Alexandre, and here he was – the Romanov boy, wandering through Les Invalides, straight onto the bridge. Here, there would be no repetition of history; here, he would not need to destroy a palace, or slay innocents, or set fires. Here, he would see his goal accomplished, with as little mayhem and ado as possible._

_But he did not see the outlaw. Running through the 8 th Arrondissement, golden hair flopping over his face and into his eyes as he flung his gaze at street signs, trying to find the Romanov boy._

_The red fury in the mottled man’s core began to burn like fuel, but he waited, and he waited, until both men – the Romanov and the outlaw – stood on the bridge together. And then, by stroke of fortuity, he blew up the bridge where they stood._

xxx 

_Steve_

As he fled through the streets of Paris from Gare du Nord, he feared it was too late. It was the night of the ball – Sam had told him – and he could just imagine the presentation Bucky was having, surrounded by all manner of women, people he could be with publicly, in a real way. Nevertheless, propelled only by his fear and his recklessness, Steve ran toward the Romanov house, fighting back bitter tears.

But as he came upon the Pont Alexandre, he saw a figure in the distance of familiar size and build. The nagging hope in his stomach flared up, but he burned through it, ran through it like fuel. He could not afford to slow down, even for mirages, not if he could still have the real thing.

The closer he got, however, the less he believed in the mirage. This form before him was corporeal, bodily – as he ran onto the bridge, he became spiritually aware of this person, as if a pair of tethers were tying him to this figure who passed slowly through the light of streetlamps. Steve felt strange – never before had he felt such a tugging on his heart – but it was a strange to which he was utterly, unmistakably accustomed.

He ran out onto the bridge, pulled by these tethers, and then he began to slow up, his eyes adjusting to the more brightly lit bridge, and then he stopped altogether, just feet from Bucky himself.

He had seen Bucky first, and he took the opportunity to look at him. Dressed in a tuxedo, hair coiffed and parted, his shoes shined, he nearly sparkled with a glamor Steve could only identify with a hazy recollection of his childhood. Bucky seemed to be stumbling somewhat, ambling along almost aimlessly across the bridge, totally unaware of his surroundings. Until he looked up.

“Steve,” Bucky breathed, half a question.

“Hi,” Steve said. He took a step forward, as if he were approaching a wild animal, unsure of how to proceed and afraid of getting nipped.

“I thought you had left.”

The tethers in Steve’s chest yanked on his lungs, and it became difficult for him to breathe. He had detected the slightest sound of relief in Bucky’s voice, but he fought against jumping to the perhaps too obvious conclusion that Bucky had not wanted him to go in the first place. He remembered their last words to each other all too well, and Steve had never been one to forget things. No matter how much he liked the person who had said them.

“I was about to,” Steve said. “But something kept me from leaving.”

He had gone so far as to pick his train and his destination – Berlin – and was waiting on the platform with the passengers who had tickets before he ran here. He had been ready to leap onto the back of the train as it was leaving, to do the same thing he had always done on train transport and dodge the conductors. He was about to put the past behind him, but then he had run.

Bucky leaned forward, into him, and Steve leaned closer too. He was hyper aware of the heat radiating from Bucky, the smell of expensive alcohol on his breath floating down to Steve’s nose. He wanted nothing more than to fall into Bucky, to feel his arms around him as he had dreamt for almost a month. But the closer he got, the more aware he became of two things: first, that Bucky was more likely at this point to stumble into _his_ arms, and second, that no matter how drunk Bucky seemed or how intensely Steve desired him, he could never take advantage of Bucky again.

Steve settled for an awkward half-embrace, was relishing it, when the bridge fell out from under them.

 

_Bucky_

As the bridge collapsed beneath him, he screamed out and clambered for Steve, who remained on the surprisingly sturdy edge.

Steve was strong, stronger than Bucky had initially believed. With only some minor struggling, tiny Steve managed to pull Bucky to safety on the crumbling edge of the Pont Alexandre.

They were both breathing heavily, and having fallen beside each other on their backs, Bucky watched Steve’s round little chest rise and fall with the effort of heroism.

And then, the sky above them went dark, erased the stars from the horizon and plunged them into an abyss.

“Steve?” he called out. All he heard was laughter, but it was not Steve’s. It was nasty, guttural and venomous.

“I’m afraid he hasn’t made it this far,” said a voice, belonging to the laughter.

Bucky leapt up, leaned over Steve, whose breath had gone shallow, and looked up again, frantic, searching for the source of the voice.

Which he found, in the form of one sallow, ragged, flesh-eaten being standing on the other edge of the collapsed bridge. In his hand, he held a tall green vial, which seemed to glow of its own accord. When he stepped out into the void that had once been the middle of the bridge, it helped him float, like Jesus on water.

“Who are you?” Bucky asked, leaning back in his crouch, maintaining his stance as a protective shield over Steve.

The being, which Bucky could only barely recognize as human, came to stand over them. “Don’t you remember?”

The being flicked the green vial, and Bucky was instantly flooded with an array of memories – _daily morning prayers – religious lessons – the wedding of his own sister, Anastasia – fire – the green threat of destruction – the train to Paris –_ and he fell to the ground, crushed by realization.

“Father Alexander.”

The mottled man laughed again, pointed the reliquary at Bucky. “And you are the Romanov boy. The last living heir to a crown built on the wealth and the backs of others.”

Bucky’s stomach clenched. “What are you talking about?”

“Your family – the government by which you ruled – stole from its people in the name of power and wealth. Your family and its name is a disgrace to the country of Russia.” As he spoke, he advanced on Bucky, leaned farther and farther toward the ground, so that Bucky was forced to scramble backward on the stone and leave Steve behind, lying unconscious at the edge of the bridge.

“Your family has waged enough foulness on the world at no cost to themselves,” the mottled man continued. He stopped advancing, but Bucky remained on the ground. “You have taken and taken and given nothing – nothing! But that ends here.”

“Haven’t you done your share?” Bucky said. “Father Alexander? High priest to the Romanov family? Trusted friend?” He leaned forward. “You have had a part in this as well. As much as any of my family has.”

“And I gave my life for your family,” the mottled man exclaimed. “I gave everything! Everything I have ever owned! For nothing – for nothing but your family’s demise at the hands of those whom you trusted more.”

Bucky felt helpless, lost in this political world of which had never been a part. “That’s all in a past I barely remember – how can I be expected to pay reparations for acts I did not commit?”

The mottled man leaned down and thrust the reliquary in Bucky’s face again. “You will pay with your life.”

He swung, and Bucky rolled out of the way and onto his feet with an athleticism of which he had not known himself capable after so many drinks. “Killing an innocent man will make you no less guilty than the family you seem to hate,” he said to the mottled man as he ducked and dodged and avoided the stinging green tendrils of smoke that sniped him from every angle. The mottled man stood a few feet away, directing the smoke, pushing Bucky back toward the edge of the broken bridge, laughing as he did.

He could not touch the gas, or it would burn his skin, as he found it had done on his ankle. He had no choice but to retreat from it, toward the edge, toward Steve’s body.

Steve. Bucky could not let the gas get to Steve, lying unconscious. He looked around desperately, for some way to circumvent the smoke, or escape the bridge without plunging into the freezing water below. He took another step back and fell over a rock that had broken off the bridge when it collapsed.

A burst of laughter erupted from somewhere within the thickening smoke. “Long live the Romanovs,” he said, loud and clear and vengeful.

He scrambled to his feet again and hoisted the rock as high as he could get it, and then he threw it, hard, across all the smoke, in the direction of the mottled man’s voice.

The smoke dissipated, and a yelp of pain rang out from his direction. By some stroke of luck, the mottled man’s leg was pinned beneath the rock. Bucky took no chances. He ran and tackled the mottled man as he lay on the ground.

They struggled, Bucky throwing punches at random as he reached for the reliquary, held tight in the mottled man’s fist, high above his head.

The mottled man kicked Bucky off of him with his good leg and sent him flying, tumbling head over heels so he landed on his back. Disoriented, Bucky got to his feet again and looked for the reliquary. It had to be his source, his power; something about it tied this man to his corporeal form and kept him alive. It was the only reason Bucky could understand for the mottled man keeping it so close to him at all times.

But the reliquary was no longer in the mottled man’s clutches. As he got to his own feet and looked around, Bucky saw him become hideously aware of its disappearance, and his suspicions were confirmed. Without the reliquary, he would die.

He saw a green glow a few feet away, to his left; so did the mottled man. As he lunged for it, he said, “That’s right.”

Bucky kicked out at the mottled man and made contact, though he couldn’t see where in the darkness. The reliquary fell into his hands, and when he stood again, he caught it between his foot and the pavement.

“ _Do svidaniya,_ ” Bucky said, and he crushed the reliquary beneath the heel of his shoe.

A large shaft of green light erupted from within the glass, and as he stood amidst it, he felt an incredible sense of power inebriate him. The mottled man, lying on the ground just inches away, began to scream, first in horror, then in pain. He writhed, hands snarled like claws, and the pallid skin on his riddled face began to peel off, away from his bones. He screamed as he disintegrated, skin to bones, bones to dust. Flying high on the power from the reliquary, Bucky passed out as the mottled man’s screams filled his ears.

When the smoke cleared, Bucky found himself lying beside Steve once more. The bridge was repaired – or, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

Bucky was first to come around, and when he did, he leaned right over to Steve and checked his pulse.

He could not remember touching Steve before. Steve had touched him, held his hand in the theatre and tied his ties, but he had never touched Steve before. His skin was cold, now, but he had a faint pulse at the base of his jaw.

Bucky fell onto Steve’s body. A gust of air left his lungs, and he felt himself on the verge of tears. He was exhausted, felt in very little control of himself. His mind was moving so quickly, it was all he could do but lie there, on top of Steve, waiting for something to happen.

And then he heard coughing. Gasping for air. When he leaned up, off Steve, Bucky heard him take a huge breath.

“Steve?” he said. “Steve. Steve?” He clutched at the front of Steve’s shirt, marveling at the feeling of his chest beneath it, all ribs and sternum and clavicle, all his.

“Did we just … who was that?” Steve asked, his eyes bleary and his mouth slack. “What just happened?”

Bucky looked around at the bridge. “I’m not totally sure. But I think it’s over, and I think I stopped it.” He looked back at Steve, who nodded, and sat up. “Tell me something,” he said then, his hand still on Steve’s chest.

“What?”

“Why didn’t you leave Paris?”

Steve straightened a little. “Like I said. Something stopped me.”

Bucky moved a little closer to him. His eyelids felt heavy, and his mouth fell open just the tiniest bit. He rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. “What stopped you?”

He moved even closer, and he felt Steve become very distracted, very slow to respond. “I …” he started, but as he opened his mouth, Bucky leaned in and caught his lips. Their first kiss was open-mouthed.

Steve pulled away first. “You have to get back to your party.” His hand, on Bucky’s chest, patted the lapel of his tuxedo jacket.

Bucky looked into Steve’s eyes. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to escape his life as James, return to his old one, his Bucky life. He wanted to live in anonymity. He wanted to live with Steve.

“Come with me,” Bucky said.

“Bucky, you know I can’t,” Steve said. “I’m not cut out for all that – coattails, and shoe polish and china patterns. I can’t –”

Bucky cut him off with another kiss, deep and long so that Steve would forget what he was saying. Or, at least Bucky hoped he would.

“Just trust me,” Bucky said. “Please?”

He held Steve’s gaze with all his might, all his intensity, until Steve’s mouth broke into a smile. “All right.”


	9. Chapter 9

_Natasha, 1926_

On the thirtieth day of her grandson’s return, Natasha Romanov bids her final party guest goodnight, and finds a note on her bureau when she returns to her bedroom.

            _Grandmama,_

_Thank you for all that you have done. I have loved my time in your house, reuniting and becoming a part of my family at long last._

_I must leave now. I have found who I am. I have found my past. And now it is time for me to find my future. Tonight, I am leaving on a train to Berlin with                     Steve. I am not sure what we’ll do or where we’ll go, but I will be in touch._

_Whatever happens, know that we will always be together in Paris._

_Bucky_

She read the note three times over, sitting at her vanity. Her vision blurred as she read it – in self-pity, in worry, in spite. But most of all, out of love. She had found her grandson, after all this time, and without her, she was sure, his life would not have turned out this way.

Dressed in her bathrobe and slippers, Natasha Romanov went out onto the balcony and stared at the stars. She was losing her grandson over again, and not by choice. But this time, she had faith she would see him again. She had faith in his life, in his choices. She had faith in love – both her own, and his.


End file.
